Kraken Sonar Systems

Kraken Sonar Systems Inc. is a marine technology company engaged in the design and development of high performance sonars and acoustic sensors for military and commercial applications.

We're leading developers of Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS), an advanced sonar technology used for ultra-high resolution seabed imaging. SAS - which is closely related to synthetic aperture radar and medical ultrasound - uses sophisticated signal processing of successive acoustic pings to form an image with much higher resolution than conventional sonars. This is made possible through recent advances in microelectronics combined with adaptive focusing techniques similar to those used in optics, but performed in software rather than in hardware.

Synthetic Aperture Sonar was initially developed for demanding military applications such as naval mine detection and classification. As SAS technology becomes more affordable, it’s expected to find wide use in civilian markets and become a valuable supplement to, and in some cases, a replacement for conventional sonar technology. SAS is also emerging as an ideal sensor for unmanned underwater vehicle applications. By using vehicle motion to create a long synthetic array, image resolution can be increased by an order of magnitude or more compared to traditional side scan sonars. SAS technology is also well suited for interferometric processing, facilitating very high resolution imaging and 3D bathymetry imaging from the same sensor.

The practical realization of Synthetic Aperture Sonar is recognized as one of the most significant advances in ocean systems engineering in recent times.